Date of Award

Summer 8-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Film Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Kelli Fuery

Second Advisor

Dr. Nam Lee

Third Advisor

Dr. Erica Aguero

Abstract

Through a narrative analysis of three of Bong Joon-ho’s films: The Host (2006), Snowpiercer (2013), and Okja (2017), this thesis explores the impact of global media flow of transnational cinema, foregrounding its potential to convey broader (but more effective) social and ecological political messages through its wider reach to audiences. Each film selected highlights a specific aspect of transnational cinema – postcolonial transnationalism (Shohat and Stam, 1994), transnational odor (Koichi Iwabuchi, 2002), and ecocinema transnationalism (Kääpä Pietari, 2013) - illustrating the fluidity of cinema in the 21st century and further, the unique position Netflix holds in our contemporary mediascape as a global producer and distributor. Netflix is disrupting the traditional cinema system, offering its users worldwide the possibility to watch films and series on demand from home.

Using Homi. L. Bhabha, Stuart Hall, and Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s theories this thesis will show how Bong Joon-ho’s films destabilize the Eurocentric perspective of traditional cinema. Moreover, it will become clear how the transnational character of Bong Joon-ho’s films and their form of distribution has the potential to engender deconstructive viewing positions, and by doing so, challenge Eurocentric perspectives.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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